[Philosophy of Social Cognition] Thirteenth Meeting
Martyna Meyer
martyna.meyer at univie.ac.at
Wed Jun 7 17:12:25 CEST 2023
Dear all,
I hope you're having a lovely day. It's difficult to believe that the
end of the semester is already in sight, and we have only a few sessions
left!
- - - - -
Next week, we will read:
Ratcliffe, M. (2017). *Empathy Without Simulation*. In /Imagination and
Social Perspective//s/. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315411538
You can access it here
<https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333689169_Empathy_Without_Simulation>.
You’re welcome to join our session *online *(Zoom link
<https://univienna.zoom.us/j/65514918078?pwd=cVZTd2Ivb09uSUFVNTZORWFIOTA4UT09>)
or*in person*, at NIG (room 3B, third floor).
We’re starting at 6:30 CET. The next meeting is on *Tuesday, June 12, 2023*.
- - - - -
And a few announcements/comments:
- - - - -
1. We would like to invite you to attend a bonus reading group session,
organised by Andreas.
It's going to take place on Tue, 6.30, a week after the last "standard"
session. You're sincerely welcome to join!
(I will send out another reminder, just before the bonus session)
Here is a short information from Andreas:
04.07.2023*: Embodied experimental session*
Let's actually embody, experience, and situate social cognition
(research)! (1) We discuss a *very* short classic paper on rational
imitation in infants. As a contrast we (2) engage with it through bodily
exercises and (3) explore how embodied practice may shake up our
understanding of the concepts presented in the paper. We'll end by
sketching a conceptual map situating embodied action, personal
experience, and situated cognition approaches some
opportunities/challenges they may pose to philosophy of social cognition
- and let this resonate in our group (I'll provide non-alcoholic summer
drinks).
Gergely, György, Harold Bekkering, and Ildikó Király. Developmental
Psychology: Rational Imitation in Preverbal Infants. /Nature/ 415, no.
6873 (February 2002): 755–755. [https://doi.org/10.1038/415755a free
access <https://doi.org/10.1038/415755a>]
- - - - -
2. An invitation to the *“Shape Grammars” Reading Group* organised by
Bailey:
Hello!
I’ve really enjoyed working through these social cognition problems with
this group this year. Given that you all are experts in cognition,
really smart, and into doing interdisciplinary work, I wanted to
cordially invite everyone to my reading group on “shape grammars” this
summer. “Shape grammars” is a research paradigm attempting both to
answer the question “what kind of cognition is design?,” and to
formalise the answer to that question vis-à-vis computational
architecture and design programs. Its formal structure is both inspired
by, but in key senses opposed to, the Chomskyan “generative” grammars
paradigm in linguistics. The formal structure in the work of our central
interlocutor — George Stiny — also owes a lot to work in the pragmatist
philosophical tradition led by William James, Charles Sanders Peirce,
and John Dewey.
Most of the authors in “shape grammars” are coming from computer science
or architecture/engineering, but in a highly theoretical manner owing to
the atmosphere at the design departments at MIT and UCLA and their close
proximity to work in linguistics, cognitive science, and analytic
philosophy. I thus take the reading content to be relevant to anyone in
each of those fields. Further, I want to read around Chomsky to get some
of the context, which will have further relevance to people in
linguistics and cognitive science.
Our central text will be Shape: Thinking About Seeing and Doing (2006)
by George Stiny. I will send a pdf to all interested parties. Beyond
that, I aim to prioritise recent papers (last 5 years) in the area. The
group would begin in July and would meet either weekly throughout the
summer or as a two week intensive, depending on the results of the
doodle poll. I’ve found at least one paper that overlaps shape grammars
and affordances, and maybe it would make sense to coordinate one joint
session between those two reading groups.
Please contact me at a12231983 at unet.univie.ac.at if interested. A full
syllabus is in development, and I will send it to you along with a PDF
of Stiny’s book and a doodle poll for possible meeting times.
Best
Bailey
- - - - -
3. Comments from Andreas on the last session: (thank you very much,
Andreas!)
hi guys,
apart from getting drenched (by rain, mostly) I was quite impressed with
the breadth and depth of our discussion yesterday... and would really
recommend this 2 page comment by Gotts and Martin ("eminent"
neuroscientists ;-) on the Seth paper that our paper was mostly
piggybacking on - I think we at one point actually tried to referred to
it in a vain quest for clarity). They make some of the same points we
were exploring plus give a ruthless dissection of predictive coding to boot:
"In his Discussion Paper, Seth makes the case for counterfactual
richness of predictive processing models in explaining perceptual
presence and its absence in synesthetic concurrent percepts. Here, we
question the relevance of counterfactual richness for these and related
phenomena, and we argue that alternative theories of perception that
incorporate top-down/bottom-up facilitatory interactions are at no
relative disadvantage in addressing them"
Gotts, Stephen J., and Alex Martin. “The Nature and Role of Cortical
Feedback in Perception, Imagery, and Synesthesia.” Cognitive
Neuroscience 5, no. 2 (April 3, 2014): 121–22.
https://doi.org/10.1080/17588928.2014.905518 [open access]
Selected fresh resources on autism and atypical social attention traits
such as trouble maintaining eye contact: while there is something there
from experience interacting with persons diagnosed as ASD, (1) its
complicated ;-), -> i.e. some Aspies will tell you they don't like eye
contact not because it doesn't do anything for them but because it is
actually too emotionally taxing, and (2) we have quite a hard time
establishing clear lab results for systematically different social
attention styles:
Falck-Ytter, Terje, Johan Lundin Kleberg, Ana Maria Portugal, and Emilia
Thorup. “Social Attention: Developmental Foundations and Relevance for
Autism Spectrum Disorder.” Biological Psychiatry, October 20, 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2022.09.035 [open access].
[succinct summary of a wide range of at best "mixed findings", I've
known and worked with 3 of those authors ;-)]
López, Beatriz, Nicola Jean Gregory, and Megan Freeth. “Social Attention
Patterns of Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults When Viewing Real versus
Reel People.” Autism, March 30, 2023, 13623613231162156.
https://doi.org/10.1177/13623613231162156 [open access].
[this is a fun validation showing that at most (some) autistics (may)
watch TV differently but have similar gaze strategies for real people
(here that's even true for the same TV clips that they were merely told
is a live feed ;-). After all, "neurotypicals" don't walk around
constantly making eye contact, would be quite rude in our culture...]
cheers,
a
- - - - -
Have a great rest of the week and I'm looking forward to seeing you on
Tuesday!
Best,
Martyna
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